A front-page article in Sunday’s Denver Post left me feeling something to which I’m otherwise unaccustomed: empathy for gun owners.

I’m not at all moved by the plight of gun owners who startle at every creak in the floorboards because the voices in their head keep hissing “the Revolution is imminent and all unarmed suckers will necessarily be toast.” I’m not talking, either, about the Second Amendment zealots who are convinced the Founding Fathers would have eagerly tucked .223-caliber semi-automatic rifles under their pillows to ward off musket-wielding intruders intent on pilfering their copper cauldrons and pewter plates.

No, the group I feel an unlikely kinship with is that for which guns is a way more mundane convention.

“Whether for hunting, trapshooting or staving off troublesome packs of coyotes, knowing how to handle a gun — including the widely popular AR-15 rifle — from a young age can be an essential part of life in rural parts of the state,” Post reporter Kurtis Lee wrote.

With several gun-specific bills heading to the Senate — including one that would require gun buyers to pay for their own background checks and another that bans the sale, transfer and ownership of all new guns that hold more than 15 rounds — I can appreciate the frustration for the gun owners who argue their traditions are unfairly under attack. They feel that they will be made to jump through hoops as never before for the right to use a weapon in the same, relatively benevolent way as before, despite the fact that their mental health, intentions and skills are just as the same as before.

Their quandary reminds me in a small yet significant way of the ongoing attack on the pro-choice movement. There are mandatory waiting periods; parental consent required; insurance restrictions; forced ultrasounds and compulsory counseling sessions that include information on the alleged link between abortion and breast cancer, supposed long-term mental health consequences and a discussion on whether a fetus can feel pain. These roadblocks don’t mean a pregnancy still can’t be terminated before 22 or 24 weeks, but they contribute nevertheless to the attrition of a right that was guaranteed to women some 40 years ago.

When you feel in your bones that your constitutional privileges are eroding, being infringed upon or generally disrespected, it can be unsettling, vexing and frightening.

Here’s the rub, though: While I might commiserate in some small way with the ranchers, hunters and gun hobbyists, I also believe that regardless of how it turns out, the time just might be now for their ilk to find a different way to scare off livestock predators, fill their freezers with elk meat, or explore new ways to blow off steam on Saturday afternoons.

It’s not just a few bad apples spoiling it for everyone else when it comes to guns, as one gun-shop owner argued in Lee’s article. The Washington, D.C.-based Violence Policy Center cites Colorado as “one of 10 states where gun deaths outpaced motor vehicle deaths” in 2009.

As the times change and get even more violent — mass shootings, yes, but also well over 30,000 other gun-related deaths across the nation each year — so do the rules.

Plenty of Americans relied on slaves for generations to run their homes, farms and ranches, but when the practice was abolished 148 years ago, those families still managed to thrive. People who sat at whites-only lunch counters before the civil rights movement still chewed and swallowed even after people of color were allowed to brush elbows with them. Our nation didn’t fall to pieces once women were granted the vote.

Things that were once a seemingly indelible way of life have a way of evolving.

The right for women to choose what happens to their own bodies without having their privacy invaded is one thing. The right to obtain and maintain weapons that can impact, damage or end lives beyond that of the gun owner is quite another, and one that requires a great deal more oversight.